Edgar Reitz's monumental epic for German television finally reaches America's shores as a 6-disc DVD event. The 15 ½-hour saga tells the story of the fictional village of Schabbach from 1919 to 1982, unfolding through the eyes of Maria Simon as she marries, raises her sons, and grows old while Germany changes around her. The Simon family, like the rest of the German people, endures the hard times after World War I, struggles with the rise and fall of Nazism and World War II, and then prospers in the rebuilding of the country in the postwar era. Despite the film's sweeping scope, Reitz-founding father of the New German Cinema that spawned major filmmakers R.W. Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders-achieves an intimate tone through his attention to the minor details of daily life-the small moments that are the most memorable. Epic, entertaining and bittersweet, HEIMAT offers a riveting portrait of twentieth-century history as seen through the eyes of ordinary people.